11/29/2016

The Association for Social Economics (ASE), one of the founding member organizations of the Allied Social Science Associations, together with the Review of Social Economy, would like to invite submissions for the 2017Warren Samuels Prize.

This prize is awarded to the paper, to be presented at the upcoming ASSA meetings in January, that best exemplifies scholarly work that:

Is of high quality,

Is important to the project of social economics,

Has broad appeal across disciplines.

It is preferable, but not required, that the paper is presented at one of the ASSA sessions sponsored by the Association for Social Economics. Papers will not normally exceed 6,500 words (inclusive of references, notes), and should follow the style guidelines for the Review of Social Economy.

The winner of the prize will be announced during the ASE presidential breakfast, to which the winner is invited. The winning paper may, subject to peer review, be published in a subsequent issue of the Review of Social Economy. The winner of the Warren Samuels Prize receives a $500 stipend.

The selection committee consists of:

The immediate Past-President of the ASE; A Co-editor of the Review of Social Economy (Chair); A member of the Editorial Board, Review of Social Economy.

10/05/2016

The Association for Social Economics announces that applications are now being taken for the William R. Waters Research Grant. The research grant is for promising graduate students in Ph.D. programs who have not yet completed their dissertation, those holding post-doctoral positions, and for new faculty members who have not yet been granted tenure or who are tenured but have not yet achieved the rank of Associate Professor. The current amount of the annual grant is up to $5000.

The deadline for submitting applications for the Research Grant is November 16th, 2016. The grant will be disbursed in January and is intended to support research pursued in 2017.

The purpose of the William R. Waters Research Grant Program is to inspire scholars to organize their research in social economics and social economy along the lines suggested by William Waters in his 1988 presidential address to the Association for Social Economics.

The major concern of social economics is explaining the economy in its broadest aspects; that is, showing how human beings deal with the ordinary business of using human and physical resources to achieve a level of material comfort. Explanation includes cultural, political, and ethical details as they are needed for a full understanding. As in any economics, there are three parts to social economics. First is the philosophical base of the social economist, which may or may not be a reflection of the philosophical base or ethos of the society he/she is studying. Social economics (or any economics) builds upon it. It is the hard core as in the recent popular literature of the philosophy of science. The second part of the discipline is a description of the significant characteristics of the economy. The economist must observe the multiplicity of economic reality and abstract those characteristics that are substantive. The two together, the philosophical premises and the empirical observations, will determine the third part of the discipline, social economic policy. Policy formulation is thus a mix of the first two. (William R. Waters, “Social Economics: A Solidarist Perspective,” Review of Social Economy, 1988, p. 113 ff.)

Please direct any inquiries about eligibility or other matters to Professor George DeMartino, University of Denver, at George.DeMartino@du.edu.

09/21/2016

Association for Social Economics at the Eastern Economic Association Annual Meeting

New York City, February 23-26, 2017

Deadline: November 19, 2016

Submissions are now open for the Association for Social Economics sessions at the 2017 Eastern Economic Association meetings, being held in New York City from February 23-26, 2017. Please visit the link: http://www.quinnipiac.edu/eea/43rd-annual-conference for more details regarding the meetings.

Submissions and session proposals that combine economics and other social sciences, including sociology, philosophy, geography, political science, and anthropology, are particularly encouraged. Potential topics for papers and organized sessions can include:

income distribution

justice and equity

economics and ethics

poverty

cooperation

human dignity

labour

workplace organization

gender

need

environment

economic institutions

economic methodology

class

All whose proposals are accepted must register for the conference but do not have to pay the paper submission fee.

09/19/2016

Association for Social Economics at the Midwest Economics Association Annual Meeting

Cincinnati, OH, March 31 - April 2, 2017

Deadline: October 6, 2016

Theme: The Economy as Social - Studies in Social Economics

Recently there has been a revival of research that takes as its starting point the idea that economies are constituted through relationships and networks of social solidarity, communitarian ethics, and other-regarding behaviors. This has implications for re-interpreting, re-imagining and reconstituting economic concepts and theories such as human/social capital, community/social enterprise, technological innovation, human capabilities and solidarity economies. We invite papers from researchers and teachers that present case studies, empirical analyses, theoretical essays or pedagogical explorations that address these and other topics in social economics.

Please submit a copy of the paper title and abstract (up to 250 words) to Bruce Pietrykowski, Association for Social Economics Midwest Regional Director, at bpie@umich.eduno later than October 6, 2016.

Please refer to the Midwest Economic Association web site for further information regarding the 2017 MEA Conference: http://mea.grinnell.edu/

09/18/2016

The Association for Social Economics (ASE) seeks a new Program Secretary. The Program Secretary is responsible for coordinating efforts in order to ensure smooth running of the ASE sessions at the Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) meetings. This is a three-year term from January 2017 through December 2019. The Program Secretary is appointed by the Executive Council of the Association.

The Program Secretary:

Coordinates with the ASSA for the annual meeting; works to plan the annual membership meeting, plenary session, breakfast, and sessions, ensuring that all are included in the general program.

Works with the ASSA and the ASE President-Elect on the program for the annual meetings; proofs galleys for ASSA program book, especially those pages relating directly to ASE sessions.

Arranges for and sets menus and prices for the Association Presidential breakfast and the plenary session and makes certain that the breakfast is included in the ASSA pre-registration materials as a fee event.

Notifies members of the availability of the ASSA-provided pre-registration.

Receives a reimbursement not to exceed $500 annually to partially cover the cost of attending the annual meetings of ASE in association with the ASSA meetings if full funding is not provided by the individual’s host institution.

Receives one of the two complimentary rooms allocated to the Association at the annual meetings with ASSA.

In order to apply, please send a letter of interest and a CV to Prof. Giuseppe Fontana (G.Fontana@leeds.ac.uk), President of the Association for Social Economics, Economics, Univ. of Leeds (UK) and Univ. of Sannio (Italy), by November 1, 2016. Phone interviews will be held in mid-November 2016.

03/02/2016

March 8 is International Women’s Day. The day celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievement of women. The focus this year is on urgent action needed to accelerate gender parity.

On that day, the World Bank Group Staff Association will host a discussion with inspiring Rotarian women who have made a difference in the world. The event will illustrate the power of women to change the world and improve the lives of the less fortunate through innovative and impactful projects in the areas of education and health. The event will take place from 2 PM to 3 PM and will be streamed online through World Bank Live, so you can watch it from wherever you are.

Three great speakers will be featured. Marion Bunch is the head of Rotarians for Family Health & AIDS Prevention. Her signature program has been the organization of Family Health Days in developing countries where families receive free consultations and health care. Jennifer Jones a Director on Rotary International’s global board. A media professional, she led Rotary missions to create documentaries and teach journalism and ethics classes in Brazil, Tanzania and Haiti. Deepa Willingham, also a Rotarian, founded Promise of Assurance to Children Everywhere, a program for impoverished girls in India. The panelists will be introduced by Daniel Sellen, Chair of the World Bank Group Staff Association.

In order to connect online, simply click here. For those living in the Washington, DC, area, limited seating is available to attend in person provided you register here. More details on the event are available on the Rotarian Economist blog where I will also feature stories about Deepa’s and Marion’s work. Please don’t hesitate to send me an email through the Contact Me page of my blog if you have any question. And please don’t hesitate to share this information with friends.

The Association of Social Economics (ASE) will organize a two-day summer school in social economics in Spain. The summer school will be free, and ASE is able to provide some support (up to 500 USD) for travel cost. The summer school will be followed by the annual conference of the economics department of the University of the Basque Country (23-24 June), which presents a wide variety of economic perspectives and includes ASE summer school coordinator Irene van Staveren as keynote speaker.

Summer schoolThe summer school provides an overview of recent social economic research by prominent ASE scholars, major social economics concepts and themes, and information about both ASE scholarly journals Review of Social Economy and Forum for Social Economics. There will be two days of lectures with Q&A, informal meetings between participants and lecturers, and a set of reading materials for preparation.

ConferenceThe conference provides an opportunity for summer school participants to present their work in special PhD student sessions, giving participants the opportunity to network with PhD students from all over the world, working in different schools of thought, and to receive feedback on their papers.

How to apply for the summer school: please fill in the application form and send it to Irene van Staveren (staveren@iss.nl) before 15 th of April 2016. You will be notified of your participation (and of possible travel support if you have requested this) before 1st May 2016.

02/16/2016

The Association for Social Economics (ASE) is one of the founding members of the Allied Social Sciences Associations that holds its annual meetings together with the American Economic Association (AEA) in January each year. In January 2017, the AEA-ASSA meetings will be held in Chicago. ASE will organize seven sessions, plus a Presidential breakfast during the conference and an opening plenary address the night before the start of the conference. The plenary will be given by Kaushik Basu, Senior Vice President for Development Economics at the World Bank.

We encourage you to submit proposals for individual papers or sessions. Apart from presenting your paper at the AEA-ASSA meetings, you will also have the opportunity to submit your paper (or a shortened, policy-oriented version thereof) for publication in a special issue of Forum for Social Economics devoted to some of the best papers presented in Chicago. In addition, papers presented at the ASSA meetings are eligible for the Warren Samuels Prize awarded to the best paper that advances the goals of social economics and has widespread appeal.

You may submit a paper or session proposal related to social economics broadly defined. We also encourage you to consider proposals for papers/sessions related to human development and poverty reduction, the theme of our ASE sessions this year. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

Poverty: How should poverty be measured? How should the impact on poverty of programs and policies be assessed? Is the nature of extreme poverty different from poverty? Which types of new and innovative programs appear especially promising to help reduce poverty and multiple forms of deprivation? To what extent is the persistence of extreme poverty an ethical issue? What does social justice have to say about the persistence of extreme poverty?

Education: How should education attainment and achievement be measured? How much progress has been achieved and what remains to be done to improve outcomes, especially for disadvantaged students? Which interventions should be prioritized to improve equity and inclusion in education? What have been the results of recent program and policy experiments in the area of education? What have we learned about specific vulnerable groups, such as children with disabilities, orphans, ethnic minorities, rural girls, etc.? What needs to be done in contexts of conflict and adversity?

Health and nutrition: What are the challenges faced by the poor to access health care? How can universal health care be promoted in developing countries? What are the consequences of catastrophic health events for the poor? Which types of interventions can help to improve health outcomes, especially for young children? What can be done to improve nutrition for children?

Social protection and labor: Do the poor benefit from social protection programs? What should be done about youth unemployment and underemployment? What are the results of recent experiments in these areas? Which social protection and employment programs appear to be most promising? How do threats such as climate change affect the resilience of communities?

Cross-cutting themes: How should we think about human development and poverty reduction in a cross-sectoral way? What can we learn from empirical research on cross-sectoral topics such as early childhood development or child marriage? What is the role of nonprofits, whether secular or faith-based, in improving human development outcomes, whether for education, health?

The submission deadline is May 1, 2016. Please go to the call for papers for ASSA on the ASE website for submissions at www.socialeconomics.org. (The submission site is now open.) Individuals whose papers are accepted for presentation must either be or become members of the Association for Social Economics by July 1, 2016, in order for the paper to be included in the program. Although this is not required, you are encouraged to share your (draft) paper at the time of submission, as this will increase the likelihood of acceptance in the program and publication in the special issue of Forum for Social Economics.

First, Atkinson presents data on household income inequality from the Luxembourg Income Studies data (LIS). A country comparison shows that the Gini coefficients of both the US and the UK are relatively high, above 35, with many continental European countries showing figures between 25 and 30. He also points out that the Gini coefficients have been on the rise since the 1980s in most Western countries.

Second, he presents a long list of policy proposals. Let me share a few with you, which are of particular interest for social economics. On taxation, he proposes to raise the marginal income tax rate to 65 percent and to introduce a substantive earned income discount. Furthermore, he comes with an innovative proposal on inheritance taxation: no longer on the giver but on the receiver, with a lifetime progressive capital taxation. This is an incentive to leave one’s wealth behind for the poorest relatives, charities or other goals, rather than for the richest relatives. Next, he proposes a substantial child benefit, to be taxed as income, so that the rich benefit much less than the poor. Moreover, he pleas for a basic children’s income and a basic capital endowment for all at adulthood. And he insists on a one percent development aid of GNP.

On employment, he argues for a target for unemployment reduction in the UK, as in the US, as well as a minimum wage as a living wage, as in the Netherlands, and a public employment guarantee, as in India.

Atkinson's argumentation is smart. He demonstrates the history of his proposals, with old and new claims by politicians, activists, and even business leaders (UK premier league football clubs, such as Chelsea). And he argues that “there is not just one economics” (p. 5), showing a variety of economic arguments, including Kenneth Arrow’s argument that ethical codes should be part of businesses behavior. Of course, Atkinson criticizes the break-down of the welfare state in many Western countries, with a reduction in benefits and coverage for disadvantaged groups. But he does not fall into the trap of proposing increasing public expenditures in times where many governments seek to reduce public debt and budget deficits. Instead, his fiscal proposals are all revenue-neutral. Hence, the political feasibility should not be a constraint. I find this part of his policy proposals the smartest one of all.

* * * * *

Irene van Staveren is professor of Pluralist Development Economics at the Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She was awarded the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Thomas Divine award by the Association of Social Economics.

02/02/2016

Here's a job opening that may be of interested to social economists (and other heterodox economists):

Chief Economist or Senior Economist

Salary: Depending on experience Contract: Full-time

The New Economics Foundation (NEF) is the UK’s leading independent think tank promoting social, economic and environmental justice. NEF understands the interlinked and systemic nature of the biggest issues we face today: from escalating economic inequality to runaway climate change. It is an organisation highly regarded for its ground breaking research and for the way it works in partnership with organisations and communities to put its ideas into action. Through the excellence of its research, NEF continues its mission to build a new economy – one which truly serves the interests of people and the planet.

We currently have a vacancy for a Chief Economist or Senior Economist (depending on experience and expertise) with important responsibilities for helping to strengthen NEF’s public profile and policy impact.

The post holder will work to highlight the critical importance of new and progressive economic thinking across all aspects of NEF’s work, including in our research projects and policy advocacy; external engagement with media, decision-makers and opinion formers; training; movement building; and campaigning.

The successful candidate will work with colleagues to provide strategic vision, innovation and leadership on economic policy and research at NEF, working to enhance and develop NEF’s external profile, its influence and impact. S/he will combine academic credentials with demonstrable experience of first-rate research and analysis in the field of economics (both heterodox and orthodox), creativity and flair, and experience of effective external engagement with the media and policy makers.

Although this role is being advertised as full-time and based in our London offices, we welcome the opportunity to discuss a flexible working pattern, and would encourage you to explore the flexible working options we are able to offer during the interview process. We are keen to consider candidates with excellence and promise as well as those with seniority and an outstanding track record.

Deadline for applications: 9am, Monday 29th February 2016

Interviews: First round, Monday 7th March 2016; Second round, Monday 14th March 2016